Known X-ray systems including real-time X-ray systems providing sequences of medical images for interventional and diagnostic vascular work, or providing individual medical images, use X-ray detectors. The detectors employ an internal physical pixel matrix for acquiring data that may be read out in full pixel resolution or in a reduced pixel resolution. Typically a 2×2 binning step is used to reduce the matrix resolution and hence data size. The data size is reduced to allow use of advanced real-time image processing algorithms and to communicate data across different interfaces having bandwidth limitations. Interface bandwidth limits may arise in different interfaces including within an X-ray detector, between a detector and an image data processing system, within the image data processing system itself and between the image data processing system and a display monitor.
Reduction of spatial resolution is typically performed on image pixel data comprising a complete acquired image even if a zoom function is used to acquire and process only an area of interest to a user. However, reduction of image spatial pixel resolution to provide a reduced quantity of data for processing and communication involves loss of information or image spatial resolution. A system according to invention principles addresses this deficiency and related problems using a smart matrix system avoiding a general loss in image spatial resolution across an image.